When an apprentice becomes master
The hunt for the mastermind behind the flood control corruption scandal has taken on a particular significance.
Retired Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said as much at a forum in Manila on Dec. 1. “This is a clear case where there was somebody up there thinking of how to get the money because this will not happen in isolation; this is very complicated. From the beginning, they intended it this way.”
“This man is frightening … He is a genius, but genius in stealing the people’s money because there was really architecture in what he did,” the retired justice stressed, saying the mastermind “knows the budgeting process and the releasing of funds.”
The venerable Carpio, of course, is one of the bright spots in an otherwise gloomy history—and record—of the Philippine judiciary. This columnist, as a reporter for the Inquirer in the 2000s, had covered him as a member of the high bench. Once he retired from the Supreme Court, the wise jurist went full blast in patriotically defending our national sovereignty and territorial integrity over the West Philippine Sea.
In the raging flood control scandal, he’s right to emphasize the importance of identifying the mastermind, much like how the National Bureau of Investigation pinpointed businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles as the one who orchestrated the P10-billion Priority Development Assistance Fund. The Inquirer broke the story on the scam in July 2013 and continually made the PDAF story as its page one headline until then Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Sen. Bong Revilla, and incumbent Sen. Jinggoy Estrada were charged with plunder and multiple counts of graft in June 2014. The paper was then under the baton of the late Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, the well-respected editor in chief, whose anticorruption, environmental, and press freedom crusades cemented the paper’s raison d’être as a passionate watchdog of Philippine society.
This columnist agrees with Carpio’s worries about the mastermind being a genius, but not entirely. For one thing, nothing was complicated about how those involved in the flood control mess plundered the national coffers. Through budgetary insertions and allocations for unprogrammed funds, the scam was carried out by the usual conniving legislators and contractors, who have been thankfully unmasked by their former conspirators at the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). These public works officials have become ready accomplices of established politicians and dynastic political clans, many of whom are hopelessly corrupt. For decades, they and their apprentices and enablers have thrived remarkably well in a government bureaucracy inured to cutting corners, often aided by a well-entrenched culture of corruption that conceals embezzlement, fraud, and extortion.
Many of us could readily attest that nothing was particularly different about the flood control scam, except for the name. It’s the same pork barrel scam clad in a new dress. The only difference is the large amounts of kickbacks involved, reaching billions, and the shameless and brazen manner in which the whole scheme was carried out.
“Cong-tractors.” Nowhere did this apprenticeship rear its ugly head so dramatically as in the Senate blue ribbon committee’s inquiry into substandard and ghost flood control projects. We learned that after some time, some of their apprentices (contractors) in the private sector learned the tricks of the trade and decided to keep much of the profits for themselves—instead of the usual sharing scheme of “commitment” (kickbacks) with their former mentors and congressional patrons—by running for public office.
Such is the alleged case of former Ako Bicol party list Rep. Zaldy Co (for FS Co. Builders and Supply) and Construction Workers Solidarity party list Rep. Edwin Gardiola (for Newington Builders, Inc., Lourel Development Corp. and S-Ang General Construction & Trading Inc.), who led the eight solons that the Independent Commission for Infrastructure has asked the Office of the Ombudsman to prosecute for graft and corruption. (See “ICI endorses suing of 8 former, current solons tagged in flood control mess,” News, 11/26/25).
“These so-called ‘cong-tractors’ are those members of Congress or their partners or family members who own construction firms that received project awards or obtain contracts from the DPWH,” said ICI chair Andres Reyes. The eight allegedly cornered some 1,300 infrastructure projects from 2016 through 2024.
If the allegations can be proven in the Sandiganbayan, then they demonstrate that working in government has become lucrative, or that the government itself is a massive business enterprise satisfying the greedy appetites of many politicians.
Their heyday may be coming to an end soon, as President Marcos has promised to have them arrested before Christmas. The public is looking forward to seeing these ”cong-tractors” and their equally liable accomplices in the Senate—eight, as of the last count—behind bars for the foreseeable future.
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lim.mike04@gmail.com
